Are government schools effective? Are so called, “good government schools “good or not?
No studies have ever been done that prove the effectiveness of institutional schooling. Seriously, we spend up to $30,000/per child/ year in government schooling and no one really knows if modern government owned and run institutional schooling works. It is just assumed that it does.
No one has taken the time or money to compare what is learned in the institutional classroom setting as compared to that acquired in the home due to the efforts of the parents during the preschool years, the support given by the parents IN THE HOME, the work done by the child IN THE HOME, the non-assigned reading and projects done by the child in the home, or by professional and non-professional ( paid or unpaid) tutoring.
No one has taken the time or money to compare in what ways the home habits and home study routines of successfully educated institutionalized children resemble those of successfully educated homeschoolers.
Honestly...Without this information how can anyone claim that any government school is “good” or not? It could be that those government schools with high standardized test scores have populations of children with parents who are doing a great job of homeschooling after the child returns from their institutional school.
Think about this. In many states, **more** is spent per typical child in a government school than is charged by the most exclusive private day schools in their state, yet, no one has ever taken the time to see if anything is learned in these government schools as compared to that acquired in the home. Does this make any **rational** sense at al to spend so much money on an unproven program? I don't think so.
By the way, I used to help with the tutoring program in our church. These children were bringing home **more**” homework” than my homeschoolers did all day. So?...If these institutionally schooled kids are doing more homework than my homeschooled kids did all day, and if they actually do it IN THE HOME, aren't they homeschooling ( AKA “afterschooling”).
What is a person of goodwill supposed to conclude?
Personally, I am thinking that maybe, just maybe, what the government schools are doing is sending home a curriculum for the parents and child to follow IN THE HOME. The school may very well be merely a testing, grading, and curriculum service. It should certainly be investigated. I think our Founding Fathers might agree with me on these points.
“No studies have ever been done that prove the effectiveness of institutional schooling. Seriously, we spend up to $30,000/per child/ year in government schooling and no one really knows if modern government owned and run institutional schooling works. It is just assumed that it does.”
In part, you're asking the question, “Does any education happen in a public school as a result of the public school? Do public schools add any educational value?”
But that's really a question about traditional schools generally, not about public schools.
Even still, if you wish to make the case that no education happens even in “good” public and private schools, it is just as incumbent on you to offer the studies that show that no education happens. Give me some nice studies, using a formal experimental method that give evidence for the null hypothesis - that no schools add value to education.
What you will find, when you set out to do the research, is that social research is very expensive to do well, and not at all easy. Formal experimentation is extremely difficult, often unethical, and often impossible.
If you can't intuit why it might be difficult, even unethical, and even impossible, I will elaborate in a follow-up post at your request.
But most folks here who are honest can demonstrate to themselves that education happens in traditional schools. I know that my own sons are have been educated in traditional schools. They have taken subjects in their high school in which neither my wife nor I provided any material assistance related to the actual subject matter. Did we make sure they did their homework? Yes. Did we help them sometimes identify when they were having problems, and help them formulate questions to ask their teachers, to get assistance? Yes.
But then, did those teachers teach the subject matter? Yes. Did my sons sometimes need, and receive explanations of things they didn't understand from those teachers? Yes.
Did my sons actually achieve some level of learning throughout the process? Yes.
So, there are three or four main possible sources of learning here: parents; teachers; curriculum and other learning materials/aids; my sons, themselves.
And truth be told, in an optimal education, all four sources are involved. Each source LEVERAGES off the other sources. The better things are at home, the better a good school will be able to educate. The better the school, the better education the child from a high-performing home will receive.
In my sons’ cases, they received much encouragement, much oversight, much communications about their studies from their parents. Absolutely priceless to an optimal education. They also received a great deal of information from their books, from the Internet, etc. They also worked very, very hard.
But frankly, without the physics/calculus teacher at their school, it's unlikely that my sons would have succeeded in these subjects. It is this teacher who clearly and ably initially presents the material. My older son says that this teacher is the most lucid teacher he's ever had. When they had problems, it is that teacher who was there to help explain the material in different ways until my sons understood it.
That is the smallest, briefest example I could give. Suffice it to say, there are many other ways good teachers and good schools enable learning.
If you want more than this briefest example, if you don't mind many pages of post, I will go into greater detail how my sons’ great high school leverages the great preparation and habits my sons brought with them from their homeschooling experience, and how my sons’ great high school interacts with my wife and me to enhance that education. But be prepared for a very long post in return.
Are there studies that co-vary out “after-schooling” and “homeschooling” effects and parental contribution? Probably not too many directly. There's good reason - because these things don't interact in ways that are readily accessible to the blunt instrument of social science research.
But you're creating a false dichotomy - that it's EITHER the contribution of the home OR the contribution of the school. It just doesn't break out that way when things are working right.
However, there's another part to your question - how does one distinguish between a “good” school and a school that isn't as good? Again, finding formal experimental research will be difficult for the same reasons as cited above.
But anecdotally, folks can tell. I know of parents who had children in one school where they didn't do as well, transferred them to another school where they did better. Same kids. Same parents. Different school. Different results. I've also seen the opposite happen.
I've often seen successful homeschoolers transfer to traditional schools, and things kind of fell apart. This is the case of a high-performing home interacting with a poor school, and the contribution of the home doesn't overcome the lack in the school.
I've also seen successful homeschoolers put their kids in traditional schools and seen them do dynamite. My own kids are in the latter category. Dynamite homeschoolers go to a great school and do phenomenal things. Where does the homeschooling contribution leave off and the traditional schooling contribution begin? I don't know! Not sure you can parse it out like that. It's just a happy combination of factors!
But where I've seen homeschoolers go to schools where things didn't go well, I thought to myself ahead of time, “This will not end well.” Why? Because the school wasn't a very good school. Where homeschoolers have met with outstanding success, it's because the traditional school was of sufficient quality to leverage all that the homeschooler brought with him.
I could do a study showing that sort of correlation, but it would be subject to all the objections you make to studies that show that some schools have greater achievement than others. Without a rigorous experimental methodology, we're just seeing correlations, not demonstrating causation.
But that's the nature of social science research.
As for costs, it's true that some school systems spend more than even very expensive private schools. That has long been one of my criticisms of public schools.
But again, that isn't relevant to the question of whether traditional schools actually add value to education.
It's also irrelevant to the parents on the ground trying to figure out how to do the best for their own children. Whether the school system spends a buck a year or twenty thousand bucks a year per student, the differential cost of tuition for the parent making a current choice is $0. The parents pay their taxes whether they use the public schools or not.
If you want to say that, all things being equal (and all things aren't always equal), homeschooling is better than traditional schools, I agree. That's why we homeschooled through 8th grade.
If you want to say that only the exceptional traditional school experience is better than a very good homeschool experience, I agree. In fact, my sons had only two choices for high school: continue homeschooling or; go to one specific high school that I believed could give them an exceptional traditional school experience.
If you want to say that more folks should homeschool, I agree.
If you want to say that public schools generally cost too much, I agree. If you want to point to myriad flaws in how we do public education in the United States, I've pointed out many of them, myself.
But if you want to say that no traditional school adds educational value, or that no traditional school is better than the next, I disagree. You will find the research sparse for the reasons I've given. But scientific research often depends on “sign” over “sample,” because “sign” is more readily observable and quantifiable. Yet, I've seen “sample” that tells me that you're wrong, and the first thing I learned in grad school about social science research is that “sample” is superior to “sign.”
As to the Founders, I think they'd make many of the same complaints about public schools as generally found in the United States that I make. But I know they wouldn't say that it is inherently evil to have government-funded and -run schools.
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